Posts Tagged ‘Tea Party’

Members of the Debbie Allen Dance Company at Houston's Theater District—Photo by Joseph Earnest

Newscast Media HOUSTON—Last week we presented an article on the evolution of
cultural trends and their influence on society. The article received a tremendous
positive response from the readers. This week we bring you the final installment of the
two-part series, since one cannot talk about a culture without talking about
subcultures.

A subculture is typically a group within a major culture that breaks away from the norm
to create a reality its members can easily relate to and implement in their lives to
achieve a desired effect or goal. CONTINUE TO FULL STORY>>

Newscast Media WASHINGTON, D.C.—To the delight of Democrats, the battle over control of the future of the GOP is intensifying, with the Tea Party, establishment and social conservative factions beginning to openly criticize each other for election setbacks. As Republicans seek to understand and explain their defeats in the 2012 election, the various factions are already gearing up to influence which candidates will be selected to represent the party in 2014 and beyond.

In 2010 and 2012, American Crossroads/Crossroads GPS, headed by Karl Rove, the mastermind behind George W. Bush’s election wins, did not get involved in Republican primaries. Rather, it chose to support whichever candidates emerged victorious in those primaries.

Some of those candidates, though, emerged from the nomination contests too extremist to win the general election. Rove does not want to see that happen again. He is setting up a new organization, Conservative Victory Fund, that will seek to help “establishment Republicans,” for lack of a better term, win their primary contests. Tea Party groups are taking offense at the news. They warn that establishment Republicans would do worse because they would not have the same grassroots support that Tea Party candidates would have.

“If the establishment’s large donors want to see a complete electoral catastrophe, then all they need to do is push Tea Party conservatives into supporting alternative third candidates. In the general elections, responsible Tea Party leaders have supported the GOP’s establishment candidates consistently after primaries, even though moderates have been nearly nonexistent in being loyal to conservative primary victors,” Tea Party Express complained in a Monday press release.

The Tea Party has data to back up its complaint. In last year’s election, establishment Republicans were not very successful. Establishment-type Republican Senate candidates lost in Florida (Connie Mack), Massachusetts (Scott Brown), Montana (Denny Rehberg), North Dakota (Rick Berg), Virginia (George Allen) and Wisconsin (Tommy Thompson). Establishment Republicans were also successful in selecting the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, but he also lost in the general election.

The poster child for a weak candidate losing a winnable race has been Todd Akin in the Missouri Senate race. Claire McCaskill was widely viewed as the weakest Democratic incumbent. Akin was ahead in the polls until he made some ill-informed remarks about rape victims. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock in Indiana also lost his race after similar comments.

Those incidents, and others like them, has prompted Concerned Women for America, a social conservative advocacy group, to require any candidate that receive its support to attend a training session. Those sessions will inform the candidates about women’s issues and teach them how to better articulate their positions on those issues.

While many in the press continue to label Akin the “Tea Party candidate,” Akin was never supported by Tea Party in the primary. Akin was supported by social conservative groups and narrowly won a three- way race against an establishment Republican and a Tea Party Republican.

Rove’s group has already announced their first target: Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), if he chooses to run for the U.S. Senate in 2014.

On Wednesday on Washington Watch, a daily radio show hosted by Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, King complained that he did not understand why Rove would target him for defeat. He has always had good relations with all factions of the Republican Party in his state, including establishment Republicans, he said.

Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee appears to be trying to improve relations between establishment Republicans and grassroots groups. Newly elected Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has been appointed vice chairman of grassroots outreach, a position that was created specifically for him. Cruz won the Republican primary against an establishment candidate with the support of Tea Party groups. Cruz also has the strong support of the social conservative wing of the Party.

“We want to work with states and party organizations, the grass roots, members of Congress, people who have an interest in who the Republican nominee is for Senate to see if we can’t find consensus on candidates that can be nominated and that can win. We certainly want Sen. Cruz’s involvement in that process,” NRSC Chairman Jerry Moran of Kansas told Roll Call.

Newscast Media WASHINGTON, D.C.—Tea Party Leaders are expressing outrage and disappointment over the House passing a bill late New Year’s Day that allows President Obama and Congressional Democrats to raise taxes on wealthy Americans with no guarantee of future spending cuts.

“Sadly, our New Year’s predictions have all come true,” said Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots. “Congress and the president had all year to do their jobs and be fiscally responsible – and, just like we said they would, they waited until the last possible moment to fail their nation miserably with a ‘fiscal cliff’ scheme to raise taxes and keep overspending.

The issue for those who believe the nation has a spending problem and not a revenue problem suddenly became a nightmare when 85 Republicans in the House joined 172 of their Democrat colleagues in supporting the measure that was sent over in the wee hours of the morning on New Year’s Day.

For the past 17 months the fiscal game of chicken rarely changed. Obama and liberal Democrats demanded higher taxes on families making over $250,000 annually and Republicans, led by House Speaker John Boehner with some assistance by presidential candidate Mitt Romney, wanted to extend the Bush-era tax cuts and reduce spending, especially on the big entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare.

But in the end it was Obama and his team that got Boehner to go off the road as opposed to risk getting blamed for raising taxes on most every American taxpayer.

The final version that President Obama is expected to sign will extend the tax cuts for some taxpayers but individuals making over $400,000 and families over $450,000 will owe Uncle Sam more money in 2013 and beyond. Additionally, estate and capital gains taxes will go up for the same group. The bill also extends jobless benefits for one-year and cuts Medicare reimbursements for doctors.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill will add almost $4 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.

Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation is even more outraged that some Republicans – including Boehner – voted in favor of the bill.

“The Republican Party has now cast itself as the Official Tax Collector for the Great Obamacare State,” Phillips wrote in an email to The Christian Post early Wednesday morning.

“Once again Republicans have surrendered their position of strength and given in to everything the Democrats wanted. This bill punishes Americans with new taxes that go not to reducing the deficit but for even more government spending. Today the Republicans stand under John Boehner’s freshly laundered white flag of surrender and America loses.”

Congressman Chuck Fleischmann was one of those elected in the GOP tidal wave of 2010 that voted against the bill.

“Months ago, the House passed bills that extended tax cuts for all Americans and responsibly dealt with sequestration. Unfortunately, the Senate waited until the final days of the year to look at any solutions. What they produced does nothing more than kick the can down the road on the most serious issue facing our nation.

“As I have long said, we have a spending problem not a revenue problem. The bill sent back to the House not only allowed taxes to increase but increased spending by $330 billion. It was simply something I could not support.”

Although Boehner voted in favor of the bill, his top lieutenants, Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia and Majority Whip Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California joined Fleischmann and other House Republicans in voting against the measure. House Budget Chairman and 2012 vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin also joined Boehner in voting for the bill.

Martin also applauded members of the House and Senate who voted against the bill and chastised those who voted in favor of the measure, calling on them to step aside.

“The conservatives who stood firm for the principles they were elected to uphold are to be applauded, but those who negotiated this deal and those who went along with it should be ashamed and should consider stepping down. The American people deserve representatives who will do the right thing, even in a crisis.”

Newscast Media, AUSTIN, Texas — As the candidates undertake the last quarter of the year, former front-runner Rick Perry has slipped to third place while Mitt Romney and Herman Cain are leading the GOP field. Cain came from obscurity and continues to grow his support, while Mitt Romney is relatively stable and has not slipped or risen considerably in the polls. What some analysts wonder is why Rick Perry isn’t recovering in the polls.

The analysis is accurate, and if Perry wants to turn this around he has October, November and December to do so, and he is going to not only start thinking outside the box, but to also tear it up. If Perry cannot turn this around by Christmas, Mitt Romney will waltz his way into the nomination. The article asks why Perry hasn’t put Bobby Jindal to use the way Mitt Romney has Chris Christie.

One may also ask, “Where is Haley Barbour, Sarah Palin and all the college students? Where are the soccer moms and the factory workers?” Perry needs these surrogates in order to succeed. Bachmann will end up endorsing Romney and might go as far as telling her supporters to vote for the former Massachusetts governor, just like Mike Huckabee told his supporters to vote for McCain and was able to keep Romney from getting the nomination.

Perry and his staff have to realize they cannot win this on their own, and only have a short window to flip the script. Mitt Romney doesn’t really have to worry about surrogates because Romney’s surrogates are members of the media as I first reported on December 6, 2010 last year, and is evident in the video below:

Herman Cain, at some point will trip himself because he is already making some serious gaffes and is having to take his words back. Romney remains the warm steady glow rather than the wild fire that dies out quickly. Without deep pockets like Romney, Cain will have problems raising money to match Romney. Cain is currently on a book tour and is not campaigning or fundraising, which is a symbol of either false hope or overconfidence. The Obama camp anticipates a Romney nomination and is preparing ammunition to use against him

Yet one would ask how Perry could put someone like Sarah Palin to use if she hasn’t endorsed him. Gingrich has recently confessed that he could use a Palin endorsement to boost his campaign. Gingrich is aggressively trying to reach her, but is still unable to do so. Perry cannot just sit and wait for the endorsements to come his way, he has to be proactive in getting these endorsements just like Romney actively sought Christie’s endorsement and succeeded in getting it.

The only problem with Sarah Palin is that she might string the candidates along just like she did her supporters knowing from the very beginning she wasn’t going to run. Palin has a job in showbiz and may want to play it safe by not endorsing anyone, in order to keep a sense of neutrality, yet that even makes her more irrelevant as a politician. Any candidate who wins the GOP nomination will not need her endorsement to make it to the finish line because all polls show that Romney/Cain/Perry can beat Obama in the general. Now would be the time for Palin to be effective, while the candidates are on their last stretch.

When Donald Trump was in the race, everyone was quick to put his or her stamp of approval on him, yet it was obvious he was planted by Obama to extinguish the issue of the birth certificate and put it to rest. After he played his role, he announced he wouldn’t run. Right now every GOP candidate has to kiss Trump’s ring and seek his blessing, even though Trump has absolutely no grassroots organization or ground game to put him in the position of kingmaker. But hey, if the candidates are giving him all that attention, why not bask in it?

Should Romney win the nomination, I suspect he may choose a southerner like Cain to help him capture the South. If Perry were to win, he would probably choose Newt Gingrich who has experience, as his running-mate. My best bet is that if Cain were to win he would choose Romney. Because Perry disagrees Romney’s healthcare plan and Romney disagrees with Perry’s in-state tuition for illegals, it is hard to envision one choosing the other as a running-mate.

Perry only has 10 weeks to turn this around, so if I’m him, knowing what I’m up against, I’d be calling in surrogates like Palin, Jindal, mobilizing Tea Party members and other less known political and community figures to help re-energize the campaign, in order to recover from the recent setbacks.

Newscast Media — On Sunday August 15, Tea Party groups plan to hold a large rally near what is believed to be a popular U.S.-Mexico border crossing point for illegal immigrants in Arizona, in support for the state’s opposition to illegal immigration, and in favor of J.D. Hayworth, the local talk show host who is challenging John McCain in this month’s Republican primary.

Hayworth will be one of the speakers at the rally that will take place on a remote ranch about 100 miles south of Tucson. Other speakers will include Sharron Angle, and Sue Krentz, the wife of a rancher murdered near the rally site. The death of Robert Krentz an outspoken critic of illegal immigration, prompted the state legislature to pass a law this year empowering the police to question people if there is a “reasonable suspicion” they are illegals.

Tim Selaty Sr., vice president of a tea party group called United We Stand for Americans said, “We’re trying to stand behind Gov. [Jan] Brewer while the federal government is proceeding with its lawsuit challenging Arizona’s right to protect its own borders.”

Selaty said the group timed the rally to have maximum impact in the Aug. 24 contest between Hayworth, an immigration hard-liner, and McCain, who until recently had been a strong proponent of comprehensive immigration reform that created a path to citizenship for those in the country illegally.

NewscastMedia – Tea Party candidate Debra Medina is shown here behind the scenes meeting with her supporters during the gubenatorial race. She ran against incumbent Gov. Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchinson and lost the race. Medina said throughout her campaign that if she were elected governor, she would get rid of property taxes which she referred to as ‘paying rent’ to the government for property people already owned.

Newscast Media — Former Houston mayor Bill White is questioning Gov. Rick Perry’s leadership as they both battle for Austin. White said, “I am more concerned about the well-being of Texas,” and accused the governor of focusing more on the next election. Bill White has been criticized for profiting from hurricane Rita construction contracts.